


Warpaint

by IsobelSionisFalcone



Category: Conan Exiles (Video Game)
Genre: Developing Friendships, Developing Relationship, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:20:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24871450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IsobelSionisFalcone/pseuds/IsobelSionisFalcone
Summary: Where her arms and legs are exposed, sometimes he catches glimpses of the red tail of a dragon, or the green, short limbs of a crocodile. The Giant-Kings did not decorate themselves in this way, carving intricacies into the black stone pillars that once pierced the sky, instead.
Relationships: The Warmaker/Female Exile
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	Warpaint

**Author's Note:**

> The developing, weird friendship between the Warmaker and my female Exile. Enjoy!

She reeks of her kind, of the undeveloped ferocity and ever-grasping desperation of humanity. Only the stench of the disturbed dead disguises her approach, although that is her fault, too. Not hers personally, the Warmaker supposes, but humans are all the same, all to blame for their own shortfalls.

Despite the unpleasant smell, he poses no objection when she begins to visit more regularly. The Warmaker has been alone for so long that he is something like glad when this woman saunters into his city bearing heavy, plated armour and painted markings on her skin. Much of it dips beneath the armour, but where her arms and legs are exposed, sometimes he catches glimpses of the red tail of a dragon, or the green, short limbs of a crocodile. The Giant-Kings did not decorate themselves in this way, carving intricacies into the black stone pillars that once pierced the sky, instead.

The conversation is welcome. Klael cares not what her name is, but she tells him anyway - Lillith - and so intense is her interest in his culture, in him, that she simply listens, endures the scorching heat of the desert to absorb knowledge in a way that reminds him of the Archivist. She is ever attentive, looks up at him with big, dark eyes and he sees that she can imagine the way things used to be. He tells her of the trade between their peoples, a once-prosperous relationship turned sour by human greed and Giant-King cruelty. He speaks of the Archivist and the Priest King, of the war, the Scourgestone and the inevitable end. The betrayal that saw a great and powerful race, one that had spent millennia preserving its right to life, reduced to nothing but an old man standing on a platform in the middle of a sandswept ruin.

"The responsibility is - or should be - a shared one," she says one evening, the setting sun making the burnt sand an even deeper orange than usual. Lillith does not often interject, but there is a determination that sets her mouth in a firm line stuck fast to her features, like the purple wings on her cheeks. "You've stood here in complete isolation for thousands of years, but it was the Priest King who made the stone, who gave it to you to use. Besides, you would never have had to use it if my ancestors had not repeatedly tried to take what did not belong to them," she says. "You are not the only one to blame. Surely you have suffered enough?"

"You speak as if I have a choice," the Warmaker says. "My kind are no more. This city is barely a whisper of what it once was. To whom would I converse? What would I do to pass the centuries, should I be struck with the urge to act?"

Lillith shrugs. "The Archivist, or rather his spirit, still resides within the Archives. There are more scrolls in those shelves than I shall be able to read in my entire life. You must have spent some of your time reading, I assume?"

Of course he did. He had read reports and battle plans, correspondence detailing enemy movements and technologies. "I should reach the last shelf before the end of the decade," he replies. "What knowledge would I have any use for now?"

"What do I stand to gain from the knowledge you give me?" she asks. It's a question that haunts him for quite a while, not least of all because he cannot think of a logical answer. "I am simply interested. Reading through the Archivist's collection has become something of a hobby. We all need a hobby, Warmaker."

"Yes," he agrees. "Mine was winning battles against your kind, until your weird sciences and demon gods put an end to such glory."

"Your Priest King subjected thousands of humans to bloody, screaming deaths on a sacrificial alter, but we are the ones worshipping 'demon gods'?"

His frown is venomous. "Do not test my patience, human."

She refrains for the time being, using a pair of flint shards to light a makeshift torch before bidding him goodnight. The smell of her lingers after she is gone, as always. Klael turns upwind of it and wonders if the Archivist knows much of these patterns she paints on her skin.

Weeks are like hours to one so long-lived. Each time Lillith visits, she is more accomplished than the last, has slain an even greater beast, found an even rarer treasure. Each day to her is just another passing minute to the Warmaker, every minute spent the same as the last. How their lives differ. She might have become a favourite of the Priest King in the arena with wily strength like hers, lean muscles decorated with fearsome tigers crawling up her thighs and wolves prowling along her arms.

After another sandstorm sweeps through carrying deformed beasts and the echoing screeches of the bats, the Warmaker notices she has been gone for quite a while. Time means nothing. He cannot remember counting the sunrises like he does now in Lillith's absence. She has become an interlude in his lonely vigil, a flicker of life that he has grown accustomed to. The distinctly human smell still bothers him, but the conversation, the need to interact with another (just barely) intelligent being deems it impossible for him to complain. Lilith is fond of saying 'you can't have it both ways'. He interprets this to mean that pleasure is always accompanied by displeasure. He must tolerate the latter if he is to attain the first.

When she finally reappears four days later, the iron scent of blood makes him dream again. He sees the city, his kind, how they used to be, prosperous and glorious and for a moment, he feels that sharp ecstasy that accompanies such vivid memories.

It is shattered when Lillith approaches holding a relic of his reign.

"What do you think?" she asks, lifting the rusted diadem to her head. "It's a shame it will not fit. Do you think it would have suited me?"

Klael is filled with an urge to touch it, to take it, to feel power coursing through his veins once again, but what good would it do him? A dying treasure from a dead land, ripped from the brow of the undead Priest King. He feels deflated. She will never understand what she holds.

"It does not belong to you," he says, a pitiful expression of something like grief, he will later suppose.

Lillith arches a brow beneath her plumed helm and says; "if I did not need it to remove the bracelet, I would gladly return it to you."

That gives him pause, a moment in which he realises that she is trying to leave, will eventually dissappear between the half-buried buildings and never return. Klael should not care, but as with any true ruler, he likes the sound of his own voice a little too much and he is not liable to begin conversing with thin air. The scarcity of visitors to this part of the land leaves him unbearably isolated, craving company. There are few so brave or determined as Lillith, so certain of their own skill as an armourer that they fear no blow from any creature. Few have her obsessive interest in his culture, or her willingness to learn.

Few hold his interest as she does, as the details drawn in crushed brimstone and cooled tar along her neck, her forearms, her thighs...

"Warmaker?"

He looks to her as sharply as the trance breaks, eyes round as if she anticipates an answer to a question he has not heard.

"The Scourgstone," she clarifies. "Do you know where the other pieces might be? I've already found one."

"No," he says almost too quickly. "It shattered and the shards were lost, carried by the sandstorms."

"I found one in the belly of a giant crocodile inside a tomb," Lillith replies. "They're here somewhere. I might have to do a little more digging than I planned."

Klael does not answer, instead observing the blood that spatters her armour. There's a gash along the inside of her bicep, one that she has tried to bind herself, although the wraps are soaked red and the scent brings back the memories once more, so painfully vivid that he has to shake himself awake, avoid falling into an eternity of unreality.

"You should rest before your next battle," he says. "Give your wounds time to heal."

"I will," she nods, although her voice wavers a little. She looks surprised at his sudden show of concern, head tilting in confusion.

"You should seek my sanctuary to the North-west, when you are healed," he advises. "there you will find tools of war that may give you the edge you seek."

"And hordes of undead, I assume?"

"Naturally," Klael responds. "I was lead to assume that you were more than capable."

"I am," she says. "I shall treat my wounds and head there in a few days."

The speed of her recovery is something the Warmaker had not anticipated; before he counts three sunrises, Lillith returns with daggers, swords, scraps of armour that she will make serviceable, a host of raw materials and of course, she had not been able to resist holding onto the statuettes. He vaguely remembers moving them around, when the war had called for such planning.

"I'm going to put them on my nightstand," she says, goading hazel eyes matching the cunning of the fox painted over her face at present.

She winds him up, but there is a thirst for knowledge that must be sated. The Giant-Kings have always been the same. Blood, bone and flesh for knowledge because curiosity killed the cat, according to Lillith. Klael knows he is not a cat, but the meaning remains the same. Despite his - their - ruinous search for information, they had lost the war, but he doubts asking her about the warpaint will kill him.

"Every time you stand before me," he says, "you bear a different marking on your skin. Different patterns, different meanings."

"I have never been fond of sticking with one look for too long," she replies with an upturned mouth. "I assume you have never held a paintbrush in all of your infinite years of wisdom."

"Never."

An expression crosses her face not unlike thoughtfulness, eyes narrowing and a quiet hum leaving her lips.

"Would you like to?"

Trust. A show of good will, of familiarity, universally acknowledged to be a positive feeling. Klael cannot think what else this could be. He had used to trust that she will not kill him because she doesn't have the strength. After hearing her tales of dragons and giant spiders, he is not so sure. He concluded fairly quickly that something else stops her from slitting his throat and it is only now, as she lies on a table wearing nothing but her loincloth, that he realises it is because she trusts him not to hurt her.

Lillith sees it as a challenge, he is sure. When the brush, a little too small for his hands, dips down to her left side, the slightest twitch is all he can provoke. The braziers that light the damp chamber in his sanctuary fill the still air with faintly smokey smell and the crackling of the flames is the only sound besides her breathing, soft and even. Perched on the edge of the table that had once held council meetings, he towers over Lillith, her frail, human body laid out across the wood like a sacrifice on an alter. Green lines that look more like snakes with every passing stroke show up well on her skin, disguising scars and dark bruises. She is patient, enduring a death-like stillness as he paints and repaints, dragging a damp cloth over the marks that are not to his liking to start again. The steady rise and fall of her bare chest is the only indication that she still lives, and her eyes, watching him with avid curiosity.

So many scars, most all of them fresh. Klael trails one along her ribs, painting the raised flesh green.

"Bloody undead dragon," she says. "Speared me with its horn. I thought that really was going to be the end of me." He takes to following the scars, painting over them, creating serpents from her misfortune. "The Priest King did that," Lillith says as the brush runs from her collarbone to her shoulder, a neat, deep slice now healed over. "I was not as prepared as I should have been for that fight."

The Warmaker hums his amusement. "How can one prepare to fight an undead thrice their height?"

"I was not expecting him to be wielding a kopesh," she replies flatly. "Or I might have taken one of my larger weapons. He got around my shield one too many times with that blade."

He tries to imagine fighting her. Arrogance makes for a flimsy defence and he is careful to avoid it. She is smaller, faster than his kind, frial, but not easy to hit. Like a bug. Or a rat.

"And this?" he askes, turning what looks like a bite mark on her bicep into fangs and a forked tongue.

"That is old," she says. "I was an inept warrior when I first arrived here. A hyena locked its jaws around my arm."

It almost makes him curious, thinking on the woman she was before the bracelet bound her to these wild lands. He has never cared much for human society, for their history or politics, but Lillith does not strike him as a thief or a murderer. How she came to be imprisoned here, he cannot begin to guess. He should not be interested. She is a human and she will die like one, either old and grey in the fraction of the time it would take for Klael to form a wrinkle, or she will meet a bloody end in battle. Either way, he cares not.

But what had brought her to him?

"You told me once that people are now exiles here," he says. "Kept prisoners for the remainder of their lives. For what crime were you sentenced to exile?"

Lillith creases her brow in thought. "Well, there was cheating at dice, but I only did that once. Then it was inciting a riot, although we had good cause to throw a few bricks, what with the mess that the guards had made. The last one..." She has to think a little harder, lips pursing as she hums. "Ah yes - singing bawdy ballads. I mean, what do they expect? I was a trainer of horses before all of this. We cannot all be prim and precious." Lillith huffs and her lip curls downward in discontent. "It was all politics, Warmaker. They did not like me because I always complained about the idle rich sitting flat on their arses when people were starving on the streets. Of course, it does not help that most politicians are, of course, said idle rich."

"You still have not learned to keep quiet when you should," he replies.

"Silence is compliance," she says. "There were many injustices committed by those who were supposed to protect us. Keeping quiet would mean they would get away with it. Politicians especially should face criticism from the public. It is the only way to ensure people in power are not abusing their positions."

"They always will," the Warmaker says. "You are human. It is natural for you to deceive, to abuse the trust that you have been gifted."

Klael is becoming accustomed to this; there are now elegantly coiling serpents between her ribs, along her collarbone and down her abdomen. His people have always been quick to learn, gifted in patience and progress. He has learned to keep his hand steady as she breathes, to follow the lines and dips in her skin created by battle and adjusting to the harshness of her new life. The brush moves to where her hip bone juts out and she twitches, spoiling his work in progress.

He must look displeased; Lillith throws him an apology and the Warmaker sets the brush down and takes up the damp cloth soaked in sloughing fluid once more.

For a moment, he loses himself in a daydream of the old world and his disdain of her kind clouds his vision. He thinks about pressing down on a dark bruise over her thigh, just to make her squirm, to make tears prick in the corners of her eyes. Where he rubs the soiled snake away, the skin is thin and delicate and he could pierce it if he pressed hard enough. Lean muscle will not save Lillith if he lays a hand over her ribs and pushes so hard that they splinter into a thousand fragments, her blood coating his skin, shards of bone embedded in his fingers and-

And then he breathes. Klael is not the man he was. Cruelty is pointless now. Besides, killing Lillith would rid him of his only interesting company. She raises her brow when he stands to admire how quickly he has learned, cloak shifting like silk about his shoulders. She is art. A canvas he has dedicated to Set. He supposes that will have to do, marking her as belonging to the Serpent God. There is little else that has given him this kind of satisfaction for a long while.


End file.
